The winds of March recently brought the first Chinese pilot to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engine airplane into New Bern on another mission to expand his horizons.

Aviator, entrepreneur and businessman Wei Chen came to meet with national champion and world-renowned aerobatics pilot Hubie Tolson of New Bern to begin learning to a new way to fly. Chen said Tolson is the man to teach him, and they plan to meet for aerobatics shows and competitions in Korea later this year and possibly later in China.

Now a successful businessman based in Memphis, Tenn., the 41-year-old Chen said he learned to read and write English in his hometown a village outside of Changsha, the capitol of Hunan, China, located about an hour north of Hong Kong.

“My mom pushed me to come to the United States for a better education,” said Chen, who “learned to speak English at N.C. State University — go Wolfpack! — and met a German friend there who took me up in his small plane. I was so excited, I sent my Mom a letter with a picture and told her how I loved to fly.”

“I had been interested in flying when I was a kid, but when the (Chinese) Air Force came to recruit pilots, I was not selected,” he said. “There was no chance to fly private planes there.”

While a student, Chen said, “I worked in a restaurant, so I didn’t pursue flying; it was not a hobby for me. I didn’t come from a rich family. We ate meat once a year. If a family killed a pig, the whole village ate.”

While at NCSU, Chen was offered a scholarship for the International Masters in Business Administration program at the University of Memphis. There he met a fellow Chinese student named Isabel, who became his friend. The two married in 1998, and he received his master’s degree. They now have three daughters, 9, 5 and 3 years old.

Chen started a Sunshine Enterprise Inc., a distribution company between the United States and China, mostly exporting scaffolding and forklifts. A one-man operation initially, Chen said his headquarters are in Memphis, but he now has four locations and about 400 employees in the U.S. and China, where he goes several times a year.

“The business did well, and I was able to afford to start flying in 2006,” he said. “Once I started, it was non-stop. I few 200 to 300 hours a year, anywhere I could find. In 2009, I was just Googling to find a place for to fly for fun and realized that no Chinese pilot had flown around the world in a single-engine plane.”

“I said to my wife, ‘It would be cool to do that,’ and she agreed,” Chen said. “She didn’t know what she was agreeing to.”

Page 2 of 2 - He began to research the route and became obsessed with getting the flight requirements of each country where he would need to touch down. He said “the hardest place to get permission to land was Beijing. It is the second largest airport in the world. They have more than 1,400 flights a day, but private aviation is still challenging, in its infancy, and most of China is restricted air space. They would not give permission. But I wouldn’t give up.”

He enlisted the help of the Civilian Aviation Administration of China.

“They wanted to send a message to the world that China wanted to open its airspace and, after talking a couple of years, convinced them that this was the opportunity China sought. A lot has changed in 30 years. The Communist Party is still in control, but they want the country and its people to prosper.”

During the 69-day trip from May 22 to July 29, 2011, Chen made a mark for himself, both as a green-card businessman with three natural born Americans daughters and for his native China.

He wants China and America to keep “working together for the benefit of both countries. The people love each other already.”

Asked what motivates him toward such daredevil acts, Chen said, “When I’m in the air, I feel like a bird. You can go anyplace you want once you’re up there.”

“But I also want to inspire the Chinese nation about civilian aviation,” he said. “It’s not just about military jets and commercial airlines. Those are the only planes most Chinese people have ever seen. There are 1.3 billion people in China and most of them don’t even think flying a private plane is an option.”

Sue Book can be reached at 252-635-5665 or sue.book@newbernsj.com. Follow her on Twitter@SueJBook.